The Poetry Place

Oxford 7 - Sonnet Complete

Oxford 7 - Sonnet Complete

Sunday, 16 May 2010 16:57:11

Some probs with the site meant the blog has been delayed. Apologies for those of you hanging on my every word.

The sonnet finished in the meantime and this is the (for the moment) final version. I decided on leaflike for the vaulting - because it is, and 'restrained' in line 8 because they are - both by their frames and their position. I think the change to line 10 is the only other alteration.

Walls and Hall make a rather clunking end but they do rhyme and they fit what I want to say, so I won't try to find something more sophisticated. Oily portraits? Is that fair? I've thought through a number of other adjectives but none appeal quite as much.

Quite pleased with men of God as my fourth 'od' rhyme because of course most of the teachers (or whatever their proper name is -dons?) were clergy until relatively recently. And gilt-framed might suggest guilt to some readers - for being so privileged perhaps? Just a tangential thought. Now I feel the final six lines are within my grasp!

Quite pleased with men of God as my fourth 'od' rhyme because of course most of the teachers (or whatever their proper name is -dons?) were clergy until relatively recently. And gilt-framed might suggest guilt to some readers - for being so privileged perhaps? Just a tangential thought. Now I feel the final six lines are within my grasp!

Oxford 2

Oxford 2

Hall and wall are easy rhymes and some of the link between them comes to mind:

Dark coats ...................... academic gown

Great men in their time, all male all vanished

Leaving these oil imprints on the wall

To grace and entertain our bacon eggs and mushrooms

What after great coats? Medals? What are those things over their shoulders? Sashes. Oil imprints? What about oily imprints? Makes it sound slightly dirty as if leaving a muddy footprint. I quite like that idea.

Oxford

Friday, 23 April 2010 07:02:53

571

101

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04

2010

07

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Oxford

Friday, 23 April 2010 07:02:53

I was recently invited to give a talk at a festival in Oxford and the organisers put me up in ChristChurchCollege, which was an
experience in itself. It was breakfast in the Great Hall which made the greatest impression. This blog is a bit different in that I've already written the completed poem but I did keep a record of how it came together so I think it may be of interest to some of you.

On this occasion, several rhymes came to me one after the other and fitted so aptly that I thought of a sonnet, as the form. Not an unuusal thought in my case.

The steps which lead you to the quad

May be the ones which greater feet have trod

Portraits of the great, time servers, plodders

Men with starts in life

The latter part was prompted by the great portraits which hang in the Hall, overlooking the breafasting hordes.

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